Classical Music

Like most great musicians of his time, Luigi Boccherini travelled a great deal. He was both a cellist and a composer and a great virtuoso, renowned for his dexterity. In his works he combined Baroque style and performance with the foundations of Classical and even Pre-Romantic practices. Bruno Cocset and Les Basses Réunies perform this brilliant music with care and verve, and invite the listener to accompany this fine Italian cellist and composer on his travels...

This release takes the listener through a special journey. Guided by the cello, you will be traversed across history through what you hear but also what you read. Bruno Cocset writes: "With these Cello Stories, our intention is to show you how an instrument and it's repertoire have taken shape whilst retaining the imprint and memory of diverse origins. I have selected the musical programme from my recordings for Alpha- some of them previously unreleased- to complement the text by Marc Vanscheeuwijck and numerous contemporary illustrations." Bruno Cocset founded Les Basses Reunies in 1996 alongside Pascal Monteilhet and Richard Myron. All three musicians studied at renowned international music schools, and have appeared as continuo players or soloists with many prominent European Baroque ensembles. The group's aim is to promote the repertoire specific to bass isntruments.

BOCCHERINI: Cello Sonatas

BOCCHERINI: Flute Quintets, Op. 17

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

BOCCHERINI: 3 Cello Sonatas / FACCO: Balletto in C major / P

Boccherini enjoyed enormous popularity during his lifetime thanks to music that emphasized rich melody, instrumental vibrancy and disarming beauty. He chose the intimacy of a chamber music setting for his Stabat Mater, writing for a solo soprano and string quintet with the instrumental textures weaving the fabric of the text's meaning. The result is passionate music with power, depth and pathos. As a virtuoso cellist he was perfectly placed to write chamber music. In the Quartet, Op. 52, No. 3, a colorful tapestry of contrasting events frames moments of bucolic excitement and lyric interlude, while the expertly structured Quintet, Op. 42, No. 1 directly evokes the Stabat Mater in it's themes.

An exciting young Dutch-based ensemble, performing on gut strings, brings flair and historically informed style to four little-known examples of repertoire from the dawn of the string quartet. Founded while it's members were students of the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague, the Butter Quartet gives vibrant historically-informed performance focusing on Classical-era repertoire. Within it's short history, the Quartet has appeared at several important early-music festivals. At the 2019 York Early Music International Young Artists Competition, they were awarded a place in the prestigious EEEMERGING+ professional development scheme for young European ensembles. With this collection of rarely heard 18thcentury quartets from Italy, the Butter Quartet makes a thrilling debut on record. The individuality of each composer is accentuated by their mutual juxtaposition. In their booklet essay for the album, the Quartet members recount combing libraries for early quartets which have been overshadowed by Haydn's mastery of the genre. All of the composers featured in Scintilla were famous violin virtuosi, with the exception of Boccherini who was a cellist. Their work as performers was inseparable from the music they composed. Italian galant music and performers were characterized by gorgeous tone, operatic sensibilities, and elegant ornamentation. An E flat major Quartet by Gaetano Pugnani (1731-1798) retains traces of Baroque grammar to it's phrasing, while a C minor Quartet by Boccherini (1743-1805) is marked by the surges of pathos that belong to the key signature as reinterpreted by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. Maddalena Sirmen (1745-1818) wrote six quartets of which No.5 in F major is a remarkably close-woven and reflective work, hardly a display piece in the tradition of her teacher Tartini but touched throughout with the spirit of subtle innovation we associate with Haydn. Finally, the C major Quartet of Felice Giardini (1716- 1796) is distinguished by an unusually rich viola part which may arise from the circumstances of it's composition in London, where the composer played his violin with both the painter Thomas Gainsborough and the Prince of Wales, who became King George IV

One of the most emotional liturgical works, the Stabat Mater meditates on the suffering of Mary the mother of Jesus during the crucifixion. The Stabat Mater by Boccherini, featured on this new release, was composed for solo soprano and string ensemble, one of the most intimate settings for this text. A specialist in Baroque repertoire, soprano Francesca Boncompagni performs here alongside the Ensemble Symposium, which performs on original instruments.

Classical Music

Raphaël Feye and the Karski Quartet have collaborated on an exhilarating new album, paying a tribute to Luigi Boccherini's string quintets. These selected quintets showcase the composers exceptional ability to craft melodies that are both elegant and emotionally resonant while maintaining a graceful interplay between the instruments. To enhance the recording's excitement, the musicians decided to vary the distribution of the parts, ensuring each piece possesses a unique and distinct character.

The start of a major new series on Brilliant Classics – historically informed accounts of the violin sonatas by a Classical-era master of Rococo charm and invention.

Luigi Boccherini, still in his mid-20s, dedicated his Op. 5 violin sonatas to the Parisian keyboard soloist Mme. Brillon de Jouy. As a result, the keyboard is more than an equal partner with the most showy writing, in the style of the sonatas ‘for piano and violin’ by both Mozart and Beethoven. Boccherini himself thought well enough of these works to draw from them many times throughout his career. Movements from these sonatas appear in reworked guises in other chamber works and symphonies.

The other sonatas here came into being later in Boccherini’s career as arrangements of other works by Boccherini made by publishers eager to capitalise on the fame and industry of a composer renowned throughout Europe for his attractive melodic fluency Several of them are transcriptions of his cello sonatas, though whether the arrangements were made by the composer himself remains a mystery. Other sonatas were skilfully put together from his many string quintets; they made Boccherini’s music accessible to those who could not perform the ensemble works in their original versions. Brilliant Classics has produced the largest ever collection of Boccherini’s works on record with its 37CD edition, which won stunning reviews in the international press. This new set of violin sonatas becomes a vital addition to the Boccherini library of collectors. Each new album by the period-instrument violinist Igor Ruhadze has likewise attracted critical praise, not least in his regular partnership with the Russian-born pianist and harpsichordist Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya. Their recording of F.Geminiani Violin Sonatas op.1 received warm critical praise.

REVIEWS:

The Six Sonatas Op. 5 for harpsichord with violin accompaniment, published in Paris in 1768, constitute the only authentic examples intended by Boccherini for this instrumental combination. The keyboard style, highly idiomatic with its scales, triplets and broken octaves, the pre-Romantic atmosphere of the slow movements as well as the quality of the melodic and rhythmic elements, excited Europe. If Boccherini did not entrust anything else to this instrumental combination, then editors remedied this by generating several transcriptions. It is this unprecedented wealth that Brilliant intends to explore here – other volumes are expected.

The pianoforte of Alexandra Nepomnyaschchaya does not dethrone, in Opus 5, that of Franco Angeleri (Tactus, 1990) who followed the autograph manuscript of Parma in the company of Enrico Gatti. The chiseled refinement like the incisive dynamic of the touch, the expressive restraint of the violin expressed in the two Italians an unequaled feeling and sharing. Among the newcomers, the seduction is more demonstrative, the contrasts more accentuated, the sensuality and the feeling more showy, as in the Allegro maestoso of No. 6 or the Allegro molto of No. 5. Above all, the Andante of No. 4, just whispered by Angeleri and Gatti, gains an indescribable beauty.

The movements of trios, quartets and quintets reduced by Mlle. Le Jeune (Vénier, Paris, 1782) are a happy surprise. The distribution of voices is skillful. The infinite delicacy of the Andante sostenuto of Sonata G 51 is truly worthy of Boccherini. Certainly, the Amoroso of the G 52 and the Allegro con spirito of the G 53 have charm. No repeat being forgotten, some movements seem a little long. Sometimes a simple foil to the pianoforte, Igor Ruhadze takes his revenge in the Six Sonatas for violin and basso continuo (La Chevardière, Paris, 1775). The Sonatas for cello and basso continuo G 20 are the most emblematic of Boccherini. It is magnificent in places (Largo de la no 5) but above all exotic (no 6, after the famous G 4). The violin, with sober and clear diction, is supported by a balanced bass entrusted to the cello continuo and the harpsichord. Looking forward to the sequel!

-- Diapason